


snow like silence, everywhere falling, even in the trenches

by ninemoons42



Category: Band of Brothers, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - World War II, Crossover, Easy Company - Freeform, Foxholes, Holding Hands, Holocaust, Lost and Found, M/M, Reunions, Separations, Siege of Bastogne, Soldiers, Starvation, X-Men Crossover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-13
Updated: 2012-12-13
Packaged: 2017-11-21 01:33:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/591940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Erik Lehnsherr is in a foxhole at the Siege of Bastogne. He doesn't know what he'll do without Charles Xavier.</p>
            </blockquote>





	snow like silence, everywhere falling, even in the trenches

**Author's Note:**

  * For [papercutperfect](https://archiveofourown.org/users/papercutperfect/gifts).



Erik wakes up in starts and stops, and once again the very first thing he becomes aware of is the terrible, all-encompassing, never-ending cold. It is the kind of cold with teeth, the kind of cold that catches you and never lets you go; a bleak and blasting rattle of winter in his very veins. 

He becomes aware of his shoes, the many-times-knotted laces creaking through the stressed leather and the eyelets.

He becomes aware of his layers of clothes, still inadequate against this weather and this war - he knows that dressed like this he wouldn’t even be able to survive a winter at home, so it’s a shock when he actually manages to wake up because he should be dying from the frost night after night, every night, here in this half-frozen miserable laughingstock of a foxhole.

He wriggles his toes and tries to shake some kind of feeling back into his frostbitten hands, and he winces against the pins and needles - and that’s when there’s a voice calling for him. Erik very nearly pulls out his sidearm before he recognizes the soldier peering in at him. “McCoy,” he growls.

“Sergeant.” The other soldier is very nearly cringing, and his unkempt beard only adds to his appearance, which is now rapidly approaching that of a bedraggled feral housecat.

But then again, Erik supposes no one in Easy would be able to pass an inspection right now - nor would they want to. 

“What is it?” Erik asks after another moment of McCoy’s fidgeting.

“Chow,” is the nervous answer.

“Or someone’s idea of maybe-food maybe-slop,” Erik grumbles. He has to make an effort to reach for his usual brand of sour good humor, because the frost is in his bones yet again and it leaves him cold, in all possible senses of that word. “Thank you,” he tells the other soldier, “we’ll be out shortly.”

McCoy gives him a shaky sort of salute and lopes off, leaving Erik to turn towards the makeshift bundle of blankets huddled into the very corner of the foxhole, tucked between the hard-packed earth and Erik’s own half-chilled frame. “Charles,” he says quietly.

He gets a quiet and cranky groan in response.

Erik wishes he could smile, but settles for repeating the other man’s name. “Charles. Wake up. Breakfast.”

There’s another groan, louder, more irritated, and then: “Is that what they’re calling it now? Last night it tasted like - ” Charles emerges from his blankets to yawn. “Excuse me. Last night it tasted worse than coffee made in a boot. And before you ask, I’ve had that. I don’t care to give you the details. It might just make you have nightmares.”

Erik’s grin is both lopsided and fond as he takes in the tousled hair and the bleary eyes.

Charles still looks a damn sight better than all the rest of them hunkered down in this godforsaken encircled place, even when his cheeks are red from the cold and his hands are wrapped in dirty linen so the chilblains won’t get worse.

“Then again,” Charles mutters after a moment and another, louder yawn, “I can’t imagine that there could be nightmares worse than this.”

Erik watches, amused and bemused, as Charles puts on the two jackets he’d been using for blankets, and struggles to tame his hair so he can put his helmet on.

The men mutter greetings in their direction as they make their way to the chow line; there’s a loud burst of laughter from the group clustered around Compton - that group falls silent when Nixon stalks by, and then they start whispering about him. 

Erik just shakes his head and moves toward the soldier manning the pot.

Charles joins him, and they look at the unidentified steaming piles of something on their plates, and then at each other.

“Don’t taste it,” Erik advises.

Charles shudders, and reluctantly takes out the rest of his mess kit.

Erik sighs, because even the coffee cannot be anything else but dark water of an unknown origin and provenance. He gulps it down as fast as he can, trying to ignore the acrid taste it leaves behind on his tongue, and concentrates on the little warmth it provides.

///

“Everyone DOWN,” Charles bellows, just a split-second before the first shell whistles death among the trees and their burden of snow, and Erik dives into their foxhole headfirst and only afterwards scrambles to put his helmet back on. 

When he manages to pull himself back up to a sitting position Charles’s profile is still lit up by the fading light from the Germans’ signal flare: an eerie effect that makes Charles look even paler than he already is, that makes his eyes seem so much darker and larger than usual.

“Shove over,” someone growls over the explosions, and Erik rolls out of the way but not quickly enough, because Liebgott lands on his foot and Erik hisses and very nearly throws a magazine at the other man.

“Welcome to our little corner of paradise,” Charles says in a monotone, still peering out over the edge of the foxhole. “What brings you here?”

Liebgott has very, very little respect for ranks and Erik is glad for it, glad for the sneer in the other man’s voice as he replies: “Apparently I picked a bad time to take a piss.”

“We all picked a bad time to be out here in this shitstorm,” Erik says, agreeing, and he fumbles in his pockets for his crushed pack of cigarettes. There are three sticks left, and he offers them around - Liebgott lights his with shaking fingers, and Charles simply puts his in the corner of his mouth, not reaching for matches or the lighter.

As soon as there is a lull in the shelling, Liebgott heaves himself out, irritation making him clumsy, and Erik does him the favor of watching his back until he finally tumbles back into his original position.

Only then does he huddle close to Charles.

He lets Charles lean over, too close; lets Charles light his cigarette off the smoldering end still clamped in his teeth.

He watches as Charles turns his back on the screams and swearing all around them and slumps down to the bottom of the foxhole. Charles’s hand moves, deliberately slow and almost languid, as he pulls the cigarette away and exhales - but Erik has been watching him over the course of this siege, over the course of this damn war, all the way from Normandy, and Erik thinks he might be the only person who knows just how much rage Charles is hiding behind his freckles and his blue eyes, knows about the tension that keeps those broad shoulders hunched and tied in painful knots.

So Erik is not surprised when Charles finishes the cigarette in a few more rapid drags and then almost viciously stubs out the butt on the bottom of his boot. Nor is he surprised that Charles closes his eyes, grits his teeth, and then growls, “ _Fuck._ Just - fuck. Fuck this.”

Erik knows better, knows that Charles is being incoherent on purpose, and knows _why_.

///

Three days later, Erik is fairly sure that he is not the only one peering over his shoulders with knitted brows, with worry written in the lines of his face.

He is alone in his foxhole, Charles having volunteered to accompany Lipton and Guarnere back to the rear supply dumps - a one-day walk under normal circumstances.

These, however, are nowhere near normal circumstances.

This time, McCoy just peers at him nervously before handing over a plate from the chow line. 

“Howdy, Sarge,” Muñoz says as he comes up behind McCoy. “What’s the word?”

“Big fat nothing,” Erik mutters, and puts his food aside, untouched. Instead he starts all over again with the long and mindless process of cleaning his rifle. “Unless you’re here to tell me otherwise.”

“Had to drop by Speirs’ foxhole earlier. Never guessed he’d be the kind of guy to worry over missing soldiers. He looks like he’s about to have kittens.”

“God help us all, then,” McCoy mutters. “I haven’t quite forgotten what he got up to during Market Garden, and all that jazz.”

Erik shrugs, completely cold and completely indifferent. The lack of sleep is getting to him, as well as the snow coming down in huge wet flakes that leave huge wet stains on his clothes; without someone to talk to, without someone who understands, without _Charles_ , he thinks he might slowly be going mad at last.

Something roars and whines overhead, and Erik watches the other two crane look up through the trees; he’s about to make them go and investigate when someone whoops - he thinks it could be Webster or Luz - and Erik abruptly recognizes the shape of the shadow that buzzes them. “That’s - one of ours,” he says, slowly.

“Holy shit,” McCoy says, and then he takes off at a run, spraying snow in Erik’s direction. 

“So they finally got through to us,” Erik says, half in disbelief.

“All right, then,” Muñoz drawls, and he tosses a sketchy salute at Erik. “I’m gonna go see what we can get. Any requests?”

Erik shrugs. “Blankets. Bandages. Go talk to the medics, see what they need - no sense making several runs, because we don’t know how much they’ve seen fit to give us. Get what you need. Whatever you can pick up now, whatever you currently need most urgently.”

“Gotcha, boss,” Muñoz says, and ambles off after McCoy. Erik thinks he hears the man whistling - whistling, in this cold, when there are missing soldiers. 

Erik does receive a heaping armful of supplies when the other two come back: blankets and cigarettes and new boots. He waves off the tin containers marked with red crosses and the words “First Aid”, and tells McCoy to take them directly to Eugene Roe. There are two heavy, knee-length coats with oversized hoods; and a large box full of ammunition and spare parts for the rifle.

“One more thing,” Muñoz says, before dropping two flat items wrapped in heavy brown paper onto the crate next to Erik. “Personally, I don’t care what you do with the chocolate; I’ve got a reason to hang on to mine, and I can hear McCoy eating his already. But I think that if you’re waiting for someone and you just about kill yourself in the process with neglect, you’ll be in for a hell of a fight when the person you’re waiting for does show up. And mark my words - you’re gonna lose and it ain’t gonna be pretty. Two cents. Pull yourself together. _Sir._ ”

Erik continues to think about Charles as he remains in his foxhole for the rest of the day. He makes himself eat about two-thirds of one of the chocolate bars - after several weeks of not-quite food, after the flavorless mush they’ve been subjected to at the few-and-far-between meals, the candy is almost unbearably dark and rich on his tongue, almost enough to make his teeth ache. 

Before Charles, he was more than used to being alone with his thoughts; having Charles around had simply changed the experience. Charles was - is - someone he can talk about his thoughts to, and Charles never makes him feel small or inferior or petty even when they talk about insipid or meaningless things. 

Erik thinks that ought to be strange, because he would never even have known that Charles existed if it hadn’t been for this war and if he hadn’t decided to learn how to jump out of a perfectly serviceable airplane, but now he feels that it might be nearly impossible to bear the idea of being without Charles.

He keeps these thoughts to himself because there is no one here to share them with, now - not even the target of those very same thoughts - and instead he smokes, and keeps watch over the others. Eventually, reluctantly, he slides into sleep, fighting his worry all the way down.

///

When someone groans and mutters irritably at him, Erik just goes: some part of him recognizes the voice that speaks to him, the solid warmth that burrows into his space.

Familiar though the voice might be, there is also a rattle in it that Erik has never heard before, and it is that, combined with his companion’s sudden fit of violent coughing, that makes him pull himself out of sleep, hand over labored hand, and look over.

What Erik sees is normal and expected and strange all at once: Charles curled on his side, curled towards Erik. Bandages wrapped around his neck, the scattered bloodstains faded into an ugly dark brown. New rips and holes in the worn-out fabric of his tunic and trousers; the laces missing from his right boot.

“Stop staring. Impolite,” Charles growls through gritted teeth. He keeps his eyes closed.

“Look what the cat dragged in,” Erik says at last, knowing he has already missed his cue, knowing that he has to say something or else he might start babbling about being worried. “You’re a mess. Get changed.”

“Into _what_.”

“Open your eyes,” Erik says, and this time he doesn’t question or suppress the note of fondness that creeps into the words, even as he pulls at the box into which he’d stashed the new supplies from the airdrop.

Charles sighs, as if deeply put-upon, and opens his eyes.

The first thing he does is grab the leftover chocolate bar, tearing into it greedily with his teeth, heedless of the bits of wrapper that get caught at the corners of his mouth.

Erik shakes his head and gets up to secure the canvas hanging over their heads in lieu of a roof, listening to Charles mutter to himself, listening to the rustling sounds he makes as he - presumably - struggles into the new clothes. He is as good as bundled up when Erik turns back around, wrapped in the jacket that strains over his shoulders and swallows up the rest of his frame.

“Better?” Erik asks, and goes to sit back down next to him.

“Maybe.”

“You should have someone look at those wounds of yours.”

“Not you, Erik, you’re ham-fisted at best even when it’s just a bottle of aspirin.” Charles’s smile glitters maliciously, but only for a moment. “Doc looked me over, but I told him to deal with Guarnere first. We damn near lost him out there. Whatever luck we had leaving this place - wasn’t really with us when we tried to make our way back.”

Erik tamps down the fresh surge of worry that threatens to close up his throat. “If you want to tell me what happened - ”

Charles does the burrowing thing again, fighting to get as close as he can, and in the end Erik wraps an arm around his shoulders and pulls him close, keeps him there. “Don’t you ever let me volunteer for something again.”

“Volunteer or be volunteered, Charles,” Erik says, wryly, thinking briefly of Currahee.

“Point. But what happened to us back there - I never want to experience something like that again.” Charles takes a deep, shuddering rattle of a breath. “Cattle car. We came across a cattle car. It was overturned. There were - there were dead bodies in it. Around it. Men, mostly, but there was a child hanging out of the one window.”

Erik makes a quiet commiserating noise in his throat, and knows what Charles might be describing. “I’ve heard about those. God, even we’ve heard tell of those things in this fucking nowhere frontier.” Understanding hits him between the eyes a second later. “You didn’t come back immediately because you were trying to find out where it had been, or where it was going.”

Charles nods, the movement almost lost in his oversized hood. “Lipton and Guarnere and I talked about it, and we agreed that we had to try. For - for their sake. We left a trail; I’m sure Lipton will tell Winters and Speirs and Nixon about that, so someone else can keep investigating. It was just that we had to turn back when we stumbled over a machine-gun nest in the middle of fucking nowhere. Hence this,” and he gestured vaguely at his throat.

“Hence Guarnere. Is he all right?”

“Yes. I think.” Charles shivers again, and this time, Erik goes for one of the new blankets to tuck it in around his shoulders, before he pulls Charles close once again. “’M not cold. Just - _fuck_. Striped uniforms. Yellow stars. I couldn’t stop thinking of you. That - that could have been - ”

Erik swallows hard, once, twice. “Yeah. Don’t think about it. Please.”

“Just want to forget,” Charles mutters. He is looking straight ahead as a single tear cuts through the blood and grime and dust still on his face. 

“Stay with me, Charles,” is all Erik can come up with - but it seems to be the right thing to say, because Charles looks at him then and attempts one of his usual half-sunny half-sarcastic smiles. 

“How do you think I came back? _Why_ do you think I came back?”

There is a hand wrapped around Erik’s, suddenly, holding on tightly.

Erik holds on for dear life.


End file.
